Peer-to-Peer Simulation of Massive Virtual Environments

• Main Author: Mathias, James Dean
• Format: Others
• Published: DigitalCommons@USU 2012
• Subjects: peer; simulation; massive virtual environments; Computer Sciences
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/1164; https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2159&context=etd

Massively multiplayer online environments continue to grow in popularity, with cur- rent technical designs based upon a well-proven client-server model. This approach has some inherent limitations, high costs to provision server resources for peak demands and restriction of the maximum number of concurrent participants within a virtual environ- ment. Incorporating peer-to-peer (P2P) techniques provides developers the opportunity to significantly reduce costs, while also breaking through the barrier of the number of concur- rent participants within a single virtual environment. This dissertation presents a hybrid P2P design incorporating a managed server along with a Voronoi-based P2P overlay for the development of massive virtual environments. In this design, the managed server en- sures a secure computing environment and long-term persistent storage, with the virtual environment simulation distributed among the peers, ensuring computational scalability.